Most effective use of Penance in MoP; Target player or enemy?

Curious to see what the general consensus on this is. Is it purely situational? Has anyone done any math/theorycrafting to figure out which is more effective? I'm so used to the idea of Penance being used as a quick single target heal.

Will probably depend on the situation, if you are already in a low-med damage and you are atonementing away why not throw out a penance because your smites will lower your CD on it and evangelism will increase its damage, but the draw back will be no grace.

Thing is atonement will kind of have its own rotation, with instant holy fires penancing on CD, and smites that lower that CD.

I think it's situational. If you add up damage plus the healing, using it to do damage is optimal, you get more bang for your buck. However, dmg is not your primary job as a healer and the effectiveness of atonement will depend on whether there is a friendly target within 15 yards to absorb the heal. If you need to quickly heal a target that's 20 yards away from the boss for example you'd have to target it with penance directly. Overall I see it being used more to do damage for two reasons: it helps kill the boss while healing the tank (who will most likely absorb the heal) AND it's a great way to build stacks of evangelism quickly particularly for using them up with archangel.

Currently on beta Holy Fire is a 2s baseline cast. Even if it were 1.5s, because it is a cooldown ability being instant cast starts the cooldown at the start of the gcd rather than the end so it has some value. On top of this it can be cast while moving.

What you use penance on is entirely dependent on if you need to apply grace to a target that will continue receiving healing from you. In most cases you do not continue healing a spot heal target but there are certainly situations you would still use penance to quickly stack grace.

oh I thought it was longer than 1.5 sec that's why I thought it would be beneficial to glyph it.

Technically it still is, as the cooldown starts on finishing casting. Glyphing it means the cooldown comes up one GCD faster. Whether that's worth a glyph slot is going to depend on the player, specifically their haste rating and whether the glyph tightens up the rotation or just means that they're regularly halfway through a Smite when it comes off cooldown.

And using Penance on a target might be nice for a cleave, but not a single tick will apply Grace. I wouldn't necessarily call that a win.

I wish they let Atonement stack Grace. If they did, I would be happy with Disc right now, even with Rapture mechanic and still iffy Spirit Shell. By right now I mean, it could go live now and maybe just tweak it later

People forget the most important part about instant Holy Fire, you can cast it while having to move, or during fights with movement, to build stacks and heal anyone nearby. We used to have barely 2 heals while moving, but now we have Penance and Holy Fire, to compliment Prayer of Mending, and Holy Nova.

People forget the most important part about instant Holy Fire, you can cast it while having to move, or during fights with movement, to build stacks and heal anyone nearby. We used to have barely 2 heals while moving, but now we have Penance and Holy Fire, to compliment Prayer of Mending, and Holy Nova.